Roblox is choosing to look back at last year with a very selective lens. Founder and CEO David Baszucki penned a letter that proudly crowed about the game’s achievements, noting in the address that its playerbase grew 23% this year to more than 56 million daily global users. More than half of those playerrs are aged 13 and older, and collectively players spent over 49.3 billion hours in-game.
The CEO also congratulated himself on Roblox’s expanding safety measures, most of which involve investing in AI and machine learning and using “natural language processing models” to flag prohibited terms in several languages. “Thanks to our investments around AI and machine learning, we’ve been able to safely channel more of our first-line moderation to automated systems,” Baszucki writes. “While speed in moderation has long been a strength for Roblox, we’re now even faster and more accurate.”
Of course, the letter avoids addressing the herd of elephants in Roblox’s room, such as deceptive “advergames” (a point that Baszucki writes is “creating opportunities for brands”), multiple accusations of exploiting child labor that still loom overhead, and several major instances of lax moderation. Roblox’s CEO was also found to be using a loophole to avoid paying taxes.
